Howtos and Tutorials

With all of the news surrounding Googleâ€™s newest additions to its search technology, Googleâ€™s latest upgrade to Google Analytics has been overshadowed. Analytics is the search giantâ€™s free software product that allows website owners and publishers to get detailed statistics about the number, whereabouts and search behavior of their visitors (and much more). Today, the product is being upgraded to become even more customizable.

The most noteworthy new feature is the ability to leave annotations or notes within in analytics charts, helping to explain sudden spikes or drops in traffic. Annotations lets analytics users to leave shared or private notes right on the over-time graph in an effort to let users bring intelligence to data.

The beauty of Google Analytics is that it is customizable to collect the specific data that is important to a user or business. While users have been able to define multiple custom variables when it comes to receiving data (for example, visitors, page views), users can now see these variable across all data in their reports. Previously, youâ€™d have a separate report for custom variables, but with this feature, users can create an advanced segmentation of data and see it across all reports.

Google also made it easier for users to track data across multiple subdomains, mobile sites and more with a new tracking code setup wizard. The new technology will automatically generate the appropriate code for specialized tracking without the user having to input it manually.

Finally, Google is going to be making a significant upgrade to its Analytics API, which launched in public beta earlier this year, to include advanced segmentation and new data metrics features that were announced in October.